Des Todes Stachel (Sting of Death) Translation
by Bathseba'sBath
Summary: Dr. John H. Watson has left Sherlock Holmes due to his fear, being accused for Sodomy. His marriage has turned out to be a desaster. This situation is close on tearing him down. When meeting Sherlock Holmes at a dinner party, a solution opens up. -TRANSLATION-
1. Dinner

Hello everyone :)

This is the updated and revisited version of 'Des Todes Stachel' (Sting of Death). The Original was written by the amazing Ampersand, you can find the story here:

.de/s/54a2fc850002a0de277d83db/1/Des-Todes-Stachel

Have fun with my first ever German to English translation, please review, I'd love to hear what you think about it, even if you're telling me to never ever again translate a story :D

Lovely Greetings

Melchetta

Dinner

People bore me. They are too fixed on their own little pathetic lives. They know nothing and they see nothing. Even if they see, they don't understand what they have seen. They are unable to analyse. Their thinking is simple and predictable, which is how they act. It's unbelievable how this overly facile principle of evolution could make its way through.

People repel me. I do not like them. I liked one of them. An exception. But he is gone.

I have not taken cases for a long time. Lestrade tried to involve me several times. I rejected every one of them. Not interested. Although there were some intriguing murders, and some cases seemed to have a intricacy that would have lured me in before, I rejected. Watson might have motivated me. He, his philanthropy and his sense of justice. He was able to put things in perspective for me. But Watson is not here anymore. He has got Mary now.

Doctor John Watson was my Claquer. He admired me. He adored my sharp wit. He was keen on my ability to observe and to overlook coherence. I have been able to outwit him with all that. He loved me for it, was joyous for us finding a thief or a murderer. I liked seeing him cheer and me being the suspect of it. I might have done some things because of him. For us. Both. It satisfied his wish for justice and my greed for appreciation. This was how we uncovered crime together. For me it never was about justice, this was Watson's motive. I despise people and I do not see any reason doing them any good, unless it contributes to my own entertainment and satisfaction.

My life has become chill and empty. Since he left, my impetus is non-existent. Yes. I have to admit this. It seems hollow without him. Life. Even hollower. Even more void. A blank skeleton of measuring time, where seconds rush trough like squalls. Minutes. Hours. Days. Of no matter. Empty. Days exist of nothing but surfeit and reluctance. Worthless. A night like another. Nonsense. Throwawaydays.

Sometimes there are these agonizing dinners. The O'Grady family invited me to their manor. I attend those events for free fare. I place a smile on my face and encounter small talk with horrifyingly stupid people that bore me. I am invited for being Sherlock Holmes, the genius. People like to stare at me like an animal in the zoological gardens. The great Sherlock Holmes! An odd fish, remote and moody, yet highly intelligent. In times past, Doctor Watson and I would have been invited together. We would have been the odd couple. Watson used to enchant the ladyship generously, breaking hearts with every spoken word. It was a game. We used to have a nice evening, with nice food and good fun. Since he has left, I attend those events and fume. That is it. I can not handle people without him. I feel extradited. I am unbearable. There is no need to blandish it. It is true. I am unbearable without him.

That is the visible part of the iceberg.

It is within me, cold and chiseled. Every move makes the rough edges scratch harsh wounds into my soul. The iceberg reaches my abdomen, where the bulk remains. Sometimes it breaks, splits into

daggers that thrust into my body while the iceberg moves, pushing new bulk downwards, the pikes deeper into the flesh. Sometimes I can not breathe.

Sometimes I do not want to breathe.

The only meaningful reason to keep on breathing would be him. His skin. The acquainted odour of tobacco and soap, the sourness of his sweat and the sweet bitterness of his arousal. The mélange, with the components changing while we were loving. His plain presence would be enough for me, the scent of his presence, of his body, the bliss of his attention, his smile. That alone would make breathing meaningful again.

The flat still held his scent. In every thing, even the curtains. Yet the scent of his dew, his smile, his sight has disappeared now. The flat in Baker Street drowns in smell and the reek of dust and ashes. Stale stench of senseless solitude evaporates the tapestries and the walls emit the moldy mugginess of unaccomplished longing. Bilgy grief lures in all edges and corners, ascends the carpet as soon as one puts a foot on it. The decaying corpse of a love lost. Ubiquitous.

Ever and anon I imagine him coming home, like he used to. His steps audible in the staircase. He would hang hat and cloak up the hook behind the door, joyous, yet not in a haste. And he would enter the living room laying his hands upon my shoulder while I keep looking through the microscope. Then he would say, warm and tenderly "Good evening, Holmes", pressing his face for moments into my hair. I would close my eyes, leaning back on his body and putting my hand on his. I sometimes do daydream, spending hours. Then I go to bed, touch myself to release, to fade down aching for a short time. To delude myself. After finishing I feel squalid and lost. I find myself lonelier than ever and at some times, sometimes I cry. Cry like a godforsaken, bruised child. As if emptiness could be filled with tears.

I would have never accepted the O'Grady's invitation for dinner, had I known what awaited me. I had been placed between a professor of mathematics and a young, sophisticated lady, surely hoping I would enter a conversation with either. Either the complex twists of mathematics or to be enchanted by the lady. I ate what was served, listened falteringly to the conversation around me and answered questions posed at me in a remote way. I know that I was not just to my two neighbours at the table, both the highly intelligent and endearing professor and the exceptionally quick and witty lady. It was not their fault not being Watson, not being able to fill this aching hole, but-on the contrary- made me feel it even more painfully.

The scene was set in a wintry dark light, the O'Grady's had lit the banquet hall sparsely with candles, evoking a festive sentiment. I had turned to the mathematician. It may have been the reason why I did not see him before the meal was going on. He sat on the opposite side of the table, some meters away from me. He seemed tired and emaciated. Pallid. His hair dishevelled and dull. His eyes were sore and the smile he tried to send his neigbour seemed agonized. His whole appearance ill and maltreated. It was Doctor John Watson. Seemingly aged before his time. Mary was not with him.

I must have stared at him and he must have felt it. He turned his head and our glances met. I saw his eyes widen. He was as startled as I am, not expecting seeing me here. We looked at each other, through the load of people, tureens and glasses, through coiffure and hats, through all the clacking, cackling and convulsive laughter.

We stared at each other. Two lonely wolves, picking up each others scent.

He turned away first, pardoning himself, rose and left the dinner and the hall. I sat crestfallen, staring at the table and into my plate. My hand refused to move the fork any further to my mouth. My body refused to swallow. My head resigned on thinking. John. John was here. I closed my eyes, trying to calm the clamour of my heart. Something burned in me like acid and injured me. I tried to force myself to remain seated, but I failed. There was no possibility to act as ever. John was here. And had left, as he had done before. Without a word and just leaving a burning pain. I had to see him.

Oh, I felt the deceit of my doing! I left my seat and looked for him. I was a fool. A hopeless fool. I wanted to see, to scent him. Wanted to hear his voice, look into his eyes. I craved for his attention lying on me, for just one glimpse of an eye. A single encounter. Some few words. He had been the man, conquering my whole self, capturing everything, incorporating me through and through. My thoughts were with him, still, day and night. I wanted to see him. Even if it turned out to be excruciating meeting him again, the anguish I suffered without him could not be any crueler.

So I looked for him. Thoughtless. Forced forward by anxiety and instinct like an animal.


	2. Parting

Parting

I was looking for Watson. He had picked up his cloak and had left to the park that surrounded the O'Grady's manor. I put on my cloak and followed the traces he had left in the fresh snow. I did not know whether he wanted me to follow him, whether he had left his marks on purpose or if he had fled rashly to the park.

I found him in a round, open pillar building, set in between ancient trees. He lent against one of the pillars, a slim dark silhouette, and smoked. I hesitated and stood still. His contours drew soft against the night. He seemed to lean heavy against the pillar as if he had no strength left to keep himself up.

"John?"

He exhaled smoke and did not seem surprised in any way as he said:

"I expected you to dangle after me. What do you want?"

I ascended the three steps to the hall and stood still. I could see him in the fair light of the moon, that illuminated the snow, as well as his face, his outlines. The cloud of his breath carried a glimpse of his scent to me.

"I want to look into your eyes", I said.

"Do it then", he answered.

So I approached him, close, stood directly in front of him and looked him in the eyes. Looked into his beautiful, loved eyes. I looked into and saw the wavering. The doubting. The memories. And I knew in the very same moment, that John still was mine. Entirely. We were close, so incredibly close. It was all still there in this very moment. The affinity. The passion. And the grief. I said then:

"I can not live without you."

Watson decreased his head and closed his eyes. He did not say a word for a long time, just stood there leant against the pallid, his eyes closed. He rose with a deep breath, broke away from the pallid, yet did not look at me when he whispered:

"I can not either."

Watson lift his hand, looked at his cigarette, drew a last drag on his cigarette and tossed it out in the night, his gestures both erratic and violent. Indignant and despaired at the same time.

"Come back to me, John."

"I am married."

"You look infelicitous."

"I am."

"John..."

"No. No, Holmes. Stop it! You know as well as I do, how utterly impossible it is."

He looked at me. Grief in his sight. I would have liked to embrace him, but I knew he would reject me.

"We can not pay the price it has, Sherlock. You know, too."

His sight branched off, looking out into the moonlit snow, into the black skeletons of the mighty trees. I knew what he was talking about. The social repression. The constant fear of being accused. Patients turning away from him in disgust. The gossip, the suggestive comments in the Times. Doctor John Watson could not allow himself being a convicted sodomite. I could neither. Both of us had already risked our heads, were no strangers in society anymore. We tore each other into misery. We had long talks and argues about it, before Watson had decided to leave and obtained Mary as an alibi.

John searched the pockets of his cloak for another cigarette, put it nervously between his lips, lit a match. The low wind expunged it immediately. I rose my hands, put them on his, created a calm space as he lit the second match. He allowed me to. His hands were warm and shaking. His sight crossed mine. There had been so much tenderness among us, in this short moment, when our Hands had touched. John lit the cigarette and lowered his hands, slowly. I sensed the conquest he was going through. He hesitated. He, too, hesitated. Whatever there was between us, it was not over at all. And we played with fire.

"We must not see each other again", he said.

"I know."

"Well, Go."

I stopped. I could not go.

"Go!" he repeated.

"I can not."

It was a mere whisper. My voice failed. I reached out my hand, but he rejected.

"Stop it!" he hissed.

I looked him in the eyes and knew that I could reach for him again, more decisive, wear down his low resistance. His passion would arise. Mine as well. Immediately. Fiercely. Without any control. We would love, out here in snow-covered park of the O'Grady's, without restraint, no control over ourselves. We knew each other long and well enough. We recklessly played with fire.

"When will Mary expect you back?" I asked.

"That is of no concern to you."

"My door is always open, you know", I said and left.

My whole body was shaking, I walked fast and distinctly, to escape the weakness of my soul and bones. I did not return to the O'Grady's manor but called one of the cabs in front of the house to drive me home. Baker Street. I was out of senses. I stumbled up the stairs, reaching my empty, somber flat, threw myself into the chair in front of the cold chimney. What had I done! I was insane. A fool. What, if Watson really came up here? Everything from the beginning? The Pain, the despair, the tearful nights, the morphine days, the closed flat, screaming, crying, raging, helpless Mrs. Hudson, howling Mycroft in front of the barred door.

I sat shuddering in front of the chimney, both fearing and hoping that Watson would come. I feared him being as disoriented and wistful as I were to come. I hoped him to be as silly and deluded as I were and really do it. And I sensed me not having the power, overcoming either. I sat there stupefied, ranting at myself several times to be a sick maniac.

Then I heard steps on the staircase. I did not believe my ears and thought me going insane. HIS steps. He walked up hesitantly, opened the door and resigned there. I was frozen and did not move. He crossed the living room and said angrily:

"You could have at least heat up the room."

He pulled off hat and gloves, unbuttoned his cloak and started to crush some dead wood and to put wood on the cold ashes. He screwed up paper he ripped out the Times and lit the fire. Only when the flames tore greedy at the wood, he rose and looked at me. His face being a dull mask. His eyes wavering in the unsteady light the fire produced.

"We must not see each other again", he said low, "Look where it leads to. You invite me and I come. We are insane."

We looked at each other. John had come. He was here, in front of me, here in our flat. So familiar. So close. His scent, his warmth. The spitting fire. I carefully reached for his hand. Yet I did not touch him. I did not want to. I did not want to start all over again. I wanted him to leave. Make it all stop. And I wanted him. Entirely. I wanted him to stay. For ever. His fingers found mine. And in the next glimpse of an eye we were embracing. I felt heat overcoming both of us and I knew we were lost. Beyond any hope. We burrowed into each other, breathless, moaning, gasping.

His kiss was hot and intimate and I surrendered. Addicted to his skin. To him. To his soul. To all he was. To John Watson. And yet we hesitated. Churned, clawed into each other, the hands resting on the naked skin of each other. We hesitated and looked up. Both of us were heated and breathed the other, deep and longingly. Yet we tore and looked in one another's eyes. Then Watson said:

"I can not live like this, Sherlock. I am torn without you. And I am torn with you."

His eyes were beautiful yet filled with pain it took my breath. I placed my hand up on his temples.

"Love me", I begged.

His sight scrutinizing. His hand on mine.

"Yes", he whispered.

We made our bed calmly on the fur in front of the chimney. A familiar place, where we had loved each other often. We laid down close to each other and caressed tenderly and diligently. We knew each other so well, our bodies, our reactions. We meant home to one another in every way, including this one. We lead and conducted with utter presence. We loved slowly and in grief. I sensed it being a farewell. We connected deeply as I stroked the head of his penis, tenderly, and his semen welled into my hand, whilst I ejaculated at the same time in long, severe contractions. We were closely together. Completely connected to one another. We melted everything together in this very moment. Us. Our lives.

We put some wood chords on the fire, wrapped up in plaids and I watched over Watson, over his sleep in my arms, lit by the crackling fire.

As I woke in the morning the fire had deceased. The flat was cold. Watson was gone.


	3. Decision

Decision

I do remember the day I met him first. He was looking for a flat. I had one and was willing to share for a financial participation. He had just returned from war, had been injured and was looking for a way to lead a normal life. His name was John H. Watson and he was a doctor. Military doctor. He had returned from the front line and suffered nightmares. He entered my life like an emaciated, hurt dog you throw a bone at for this wiggling his tail and loving you. That was my view of him in the beginning. He took the room upstairs and was willing to pay fifteen pounds per month.

When he came he had nothing but a bag, where his few belongings fitted in easily. Some clothes, an army pistol, a saber, a dagger, some memories from Afghanistan. Mrs. Hudson was happy to hear that he claimed the whole furnishing, bedding and linen. Well, he was a friendly, straightforward man. When Mike Stamford introduced him I thought him harmless and naive. But his eyes were beautiful and fascinating. This was the first disastrous deduction. Disastrous for addicting me from the first moment on. These eyes; full with life and emotion. Full with all the things that I lacked. I realized much later that it was me who provoked all of it. John had a way to smile, to think and to pay attention to me that biased me towards him. He changed my life completely. He taught me how to feel, my soul how to fly, my mind how to calm down. He taught my body to surrender and ignited my heart. Doctor John Hamish Watson was anything but harmless. He made me a loving, lost human. He presented me a kingdom of heaven, whose backside was hell.

My brother was the first to conclude. I remember a picture in the Times. We had been photographed together at a crime scene. We were leaving, Watson and I. We stood next to each other. We did not look the other in the eyes but we seemed clearly allocated and our shoulders slightly touched. We faced the camera with such a deep contentment and such happiness in our eyes, no one believed it to be fake. Watson and I looked like a newly wed couple. The picture shocked me when it appeared in the newspaper. Most of the people surely missed the details. Yet some others did understand the message. My brother said:

"Be careful about yourself and Watson, are you?"

I told him and I remember myself quite beaming with joy:

"He is my friend."

"Love is a chemical malfunction, Sherlock. And love among men is a crime."

"He is my friend.", I repeated.

He still was at that time. My friend. For a little time left. Some hours later we were lovers and criminals. We went home to Baker Street after solving the case. Both deep in thoughts. Both knowing that the tenderness and the contingencies that happened among us were crossing the borders of friendship easily. Both feeling the longing behind these gestures that urged relentlessly to the surface. We talked about it that evening. John Watson was brave enough to approach the subject and to kiss me, to break the spell. We loved for the first time that night. Sinful, passionate. I was overwhelmed with the experience and could not believe the luck I witnessed. I realized the meaning of surrendering completely to somebody by time, the meaning of being woven into another being. I realized the terminal addiction connected to it.

We feed from the strength of our love. I was unspeakably serendipitous. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. John had assumed a small surgery. We solved difficult cases. It had been the best time of my life.

But our bliss did not remain secret. First there were begrudges, then people disliking our work. Finally even the public sensed something, feeding the gossip eagerly. Someday, John left. I know he did it for me. For both of us. To save us. To save me.

Yet there is nothing that could save me.

He has left for the second time now. But it is different this time. He has left for good.

I do not know whether I have known, sensed or even waited for it. Three days after our last night I received the telegram that the body of Doctor John H. Watson had been found. He had turned the army pistol to himself out in the woods. I was in a state of shock when I realized that he had gone. All gone. That there was no possibility to ever look into his beautiful, familiar eyes, to ever embrace him.

Something within me fell apart and moved me into a condition of loss of space. I sat in my chair in front of the chimney, empty and timeless. I just sat there. No pain. Just plain and sober nothingness. Yet something had fallen apart, deeply, silently. It took some time to realize it. A distortion. No blind, maddening pain, crying, raging and sobbing, no fight as before, as he had left the first time. It was a single, heavy fault that moved all grounds. Out of this, tears welled up like from a fountain, and once they had been released, the desperate hopelessness and the cruel stinging bitterness that had accompanied me for so long as well. Everything welled up from me. A black, venomous, putrescent swill. I cried, vomited, coughed and gasped them out of my body, my soul. I let it all flow out. There was nothing left worth keeping. I did not fight. I just gave up. It took countless hours to exhaust my body completely. Mrs. Hudson and Mycroft looked after me. I hardly perceive them. A black hole of irrelevance. Just the fault within. I knew it was important. My life had fallen apart.

No note. He did not leave anything. Not a single word. It just is not necessary. I know all his words. His thoughts. His warm smile. His hands touching me. His heating body. I know everything about him. Know him completely.

I started to comprehend. He had freed me. Freed us. Our love. His death had elevated it from this hostile earth to place it in a memory that could not be harmed any more. He secured everything we were and everything we shared. He created an indestructible band in a sphere out of our love, where no society, no gossip, no world power was ever able to destroy it. Our love had become sacrosanct.

I went to his funeral. I wanted it, wanted to accompany him to the place we would finally meet again. I was able to do this for him as a token of my unabated love. Mycroft worried about me. Maybe he sensed that I had found John in a new way; John was closer than ever. I sensed him so close to me as if we were sleeping together, yet there was no flesh parting us anymore. I looked perpetually into his beautiful, loving eyes and felt him embracing me all the time.

I went to his funeral and cried uncontrollably at his tomb. Mycroft held me. I wept over our unaccomplished lives. Over his. And over mine. I wept for the people close to us. Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade. I wept over the farewell. I did not weep over our love, for it was indestructible.

I talked to Mary and grieved for her. She was the victim of our incapacity. She seemed calm.

She said:

"The love for you has killed him."

And I responded:

"We still love each other."

She stared at me in dismay and said:

"Do not commit a sin, Sherlock Holmes."

Commit a sin? His body lay wrecked in a coffin and entrusted to dissolution. A suicide. Without the right to receive the sacraments of church. It did not matter, though. The love he hallowed me with was still there. I would hallow him with this love as well. Wholly and unprejudiced.

We committed Johns body to earth. I had memorised him. Every inch. His overwhelming beauty and strength. I sensed him in every moment. I gave him flowers to take with him, witnesses of my appreciation. I was aware of death while doing that. The only man I had shared my life with, to whom I had revealed my soul, whom I had gifted my body to; he was no longer here. The only man that the longing of my heart sensed after day and night, whom I had yearned for was no longer here. He had relieved himself. And me as well. Now there was a path to reach him.

John Watson has stopped the world for both of us. He got off and has left the door open for me. He has always been the braver one. The world is braked. Time stands still. Reality has fallen apart to empty nothingness.

Oh, death, where is thy sting?

I always have enough morphine at home.

End.


End file.
